‘If there was a case where fact is stranger than fiction, this is it.’
Richard Dawkins, evolutionary biologist
It was hailed as one of the most exceptional fossil discoveries in decades, so unexpected that it threatened to overturn accepted notions of human origins and posed questions that reach far beyond science itself. Not surprisingly it sent shock waves around the world that are still reverberating.
The Hobbit Enigma takes us from the moment of discovery of the hobbit-like creature on the Indonesian island of Flores in 2003, through the bitter scientific arguments that followed, to the current investigations which reveal the real implications of the discovery: The meter-tall fossil raised so many questions because she looked so primitive, but was only 12,000 years old. How could the hobbits have survived for so long and until so recently? Who were their ancestors? Could it be that early humans have originated in Asia rather than Africa?
Some of the sceptics have argued that the Hobbit was simply a sick pygmy – a modern human with a rare disease like microcephaly. However, four years after the initial discovery there is now compelling scientific evidence to support naming the Hobbit as a new species: Homo floresiensis.
